Team Teaching

In his book, The Skillful Teacher, Brookfield speaks very highly of team teaching. As I began reading his perspective, my first thought took me back to my past experiences as a student with having multiple "authorities" in one space. I found it quite stressful not knowing whose method or answer would be the best, most accurate, and most likely to result in the best grade.

However, as I continued reading, I realized that I had really missed the point when I was a student and that I didn't even fully understand what it meant to teach as a team even from a teacher's perspective. Team teaching is meant to help mitigate one person's perspective or approach from being the ultimate authority in a classroom. Rather than igniting panic in the student, it should bring increased understanding and add nuance to the learning.

Team teaching isn't about making the teacher's workload easier - it's about making it more robust, more thorough. In fact, teaching in a team will almost guarantee an increased workload because the teachers must connect to discuss and collaborate on every aspect of teaching rather than just winging it.

I think, now, I would appreciate the multiple perspectives I could glean from a teaching team.

Brookfield, S. (2015). The Skillful Teacher. (3rd Ed.) Jossey-Bass.

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0